Katrina Ogden Mysteries, Book 3: KO'd in the Rift by Victoria Heckman

Chapter 1

Honolulu police officer Katrina Ogden, K.O., sat slumped at her desk, chin in hand, dispiritedly surveying the four-foot-high stack of paper in the corner.

The Sergeant's Exam materials.

She had started to study. Several times. It just seemed like something always interrupted her. She did take some of it home to work on late at night after her 3:00 to 11:00 P.M. shift in Evidence. That had been the problem--late at night. With the best of intentions, she would sit at her dining room table, stiff and uncomfortable, bright light glaring onto the pages. It did no good. She drifted off to sleep and woke hours later with a crick in her neck and no idea of what she'd read.

The exam, designed by a clerk test preparer at the city and county level, not a cop, was nearly impossible to study for. It could encompass anything from union rules to police standards and conduct. It was a "crapshoot", as others gone before had told K.O.

She sighed, rubbed her face and ran her fingers through her short, red hair. This wasn't getting anything done, much less preparing for the exam. She told herself she'd finish checking the forms stacked on her desk against the evidence submitted, then she'd crack the penal code book. Again.

As the head of Evidence on her shift, one of her tasks was to make sure that evidence logged in was actually what and where it was said to be. She picked up the log on her way to the Evidence room in the main office.

She unlocked the door and stepped inside the cavernous room. Metal shelves lined the walls up to the ceiling, and more rows divided the room into narrow aisles--a bizarre warehouse of people's lives torn apart by crime.

The room was further divided by types of crime and evidence. Separate sections for weapons, homicide, drugs. Larger pieces of evidence, such as cars, were in a different, roomier location.

She passed by the boogie board with the large, jagged semi-circular bite missing. During her first tour of the evidence locker, she'd asked why this obvious, but sinister-looking item was included. It was considered evidence in a Missing Person's case, because a body had never been recovered. Every time she passed it, she thought, "Duh. He's going to be missing for a long time."

She walked among the shelves, matching tag numbers to items, trying not to absorb the impact of thousands of objects, some bloodied and mangled, others more innocuous looking, that represented unsolved crimes. It saddened her to think that so many cases would never be closed, meaning that all those families touched by them would have no end. In self-defense, she shut them all out, those small voices asking for help, and briskly moved through the shadowy room.